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Ed. Magazine

What's in a Name?: Kazuko Narui, Ed.M.'93

Kazuko Narui

 

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When Kazuko Narui, Ed.M.'93, was born, her parents chose a name for her that could have been hard to live up to. In her native Japanese, Kazuko means "child of peace." But, instead of being intimidated, Narui has risen to her name's challenge by choosing a career in education, she says, "to serve children of the world," with the hope of helping reach her parents' dream of peace and stability throughout the world.

In 1980, Narui started teaching at the International School of the Sacred Heart (ISSH) in Tokyo. As a world religions teacher in the Values Department at ISSH, she works with students from all over the world who practice a variety of religious and cultural traditions (in fact, this year, the school's student body consists of more than 50 nationalities). But, more than a decade into her teaching career, Narui took some time off to further her own education when her husband's company transferred him to Acton, Mass.

"I thought living in the USA was a good opportunity for me to study education so that I could enrich myself in the field in order to help [my] foreign students better. I also wanted to become a model to the Japanese teachers and students to prepare for globalization." she says. She chose the Ed School and developed an individualized course of study focusing on human development and international education.

After obtaining her degree, Narui returned to her work at ISSH. "Students at ISSH study the world," she says. "They appreciate what they have. At the same time they work for charity to reach out to needy children in the world."

In this spirit, Narui traveled to Mongolia during last March's school break. One of Narui's former colleagues at ISSH was working at a community center in the ger district in Ulaanbaatar. A ger is the traditional mobile, felt-lined tent in which many Mongolian families live. Narui was at first struck by the district's dire living conditions. It was winter, and "the roads were frozen and filled with dust, trash, broken glass, and [scraps of] metal. I have never seen so much trash-like trash," she remembers.

Without the means for necessities, families turn to the community center for clothes, medicine, and fuel, but also to educate young children and help adults procure jobs. With limited time in Ulaanbaatar, Narui focused her attention on the children.

"In the community center classrooms I managed to speak to students about my country and introduce an origami paper craft," she says. "Students looked well in their best clothes and [were] happy learning new things. Otherwise they would be doing endless manual work such as walking a long way with loads of water to bring home twice a day. It was a common scene in the ger districts."

Origami, Narui believes, is the perfect crosscurricular education program and even sees in it evidence of Professor Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. The activity, she says, has elements of color, shape, counting, mathematics, geometry, hand-eye coordination, gross and fine motor skills, and concentration skills.

"If a student's time in primary school is limited because of poverty, she/he should be able to make the best use of the time. Origami activities have everything," Narui explains. "Their vocabulary in different fields will increase as their skills improve. They will verbalize their thoughts to share with others. At the same time, they develop creative ideas of making a simple flat square paper into a complicated three-dimensional object. Origami is an activity to foster multiple intelligences, which instill their potential at school or at work in the long run."

Now back in Japan for the start of the school year, Narui continues her quest to fulfill her name's promise and hopes other educators will follow her lead by exploring conditions, both educational and otherwise, in other parts of the world. "My trip was educational for me," she says. "It would be as educational for many students in the world."

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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